Ortelius

Man as soon as I don’t have my Mac anymore they release all this cool software that I was waiting on. One of which is this little Mapping illustration program called Ortelius.
Ortelius is a Mac OS X program that allows you to create you own maps with layers, labels, colors, and a nice set of drawing/editing tools (including auto junctions). Best of all you an import ESRI shapefiles so you don’t have to start from scratch and it includes scales, geographic intelligence. Its a cartographer dream and a mapmakers fancy. Wish they had this for PC so that I can download and test it out.  Ortelius goes for $99 standard and $49 for student. The professional version is in the works. Tons of tutorials here and screencasts so you can learn how to use the product. I’m just glad to see that the product was released after hearing about it a few years back. If you would like to do more traditional GIS work on the map look no further than Cartographica. Ortelius will help you to make maps quickly especially for presentations and publishing.